The Green Deal Assessment is the first part of your Green Deal Customer Journey, and is necessary even if you already have an EPC. You’ll need an EPC to get a Green Deal Assessment, so you’ll need to get this done if you don’t already have one or it was completed before April 2012. The Green Deal Assessment is different to the EPC in that it looks at the energy behaviour of the current occupants of the house, as well as telling you whether getting certain improvements under the Green Deal would be worth it for you. Only improvements that pay for themselves will be allowed to be funded, meaning that you shouldn’t be any more out of pocket than you would have been without the improvements. For measures that cannot be fully covered by the Green Deal because they are too expensive, you can either part fund the improvement yourself or get a grant for part or all of the cost through the ECO (Energy Company Obligation).

The assessment needs to be carried out by a qualified Green Deal Assessor, who could be freelance or working for a Green Deal Provider. The assessment itself costs around £100, but rates do vary, and you can get it free from some Providers if you use them to get an installation done. We’ve made a handy infographic available here comparing different Providers’ assessment fees.

We checked with some Providers to see how soon we could book an assessment –some are only taking bookings in two weeks’ time, and even those taking bookings now are only starting to assess from mid February. The delays are because some Providers are waiting to get more details about the scheme in terms of how it operates. The full story is expected to be announced in the next couple of weeks now that the scheme has launched.

The Green Deal isn’t the only way to make your low carbon home improvement a reality. There are now a lot of schemes that pay you to install different improvements – from grants of £1,250 to FIT payments which can amount to as much as £4,000 profit over the life of the tariff. Why not see which solutions would work in your home with our handy assessment tool?